STERLING -- Approximately 20 new nurses are entering the healthcare field. Northeastern Junior College celebrated the achievements of these new nurses Thursday, at the Associate Degree Nursing Pinning Ceremony.

Following an invocation by Aaron Edinger, nursing director Julie Brower welcomed the graduates and their families and friends to the ceremony.

"I'm very proud of what these 20 nursing students have done," she said. "Nursing school is no easy task."

Brower shared the graduates accomplishments including completing every course with at least a 77 percent test score average. Throughout their time at NJC they had to write multiple papers and weekly care plans, travel to multiple clinical sites and learn to adjust to multiple instructors expectations and different styles of teaching.

LeAnn Thieman, co-author of "Chicken Soup for the Nurse's Soul," was the guest speaker for the ceremony.

"Graduates I am in awe of you," she told them. "You've had to dig deep these last couple of years, and more, and I think you found the courage, and the determination and a compassion to get you through these past couple years."

Thieman told the students that this marks a new era in their life and "this is a time that you can make decisions about how you're going to take good care of you."

"I believe when you take good care of you, you're going to be in an even better place to take good care of your patients," she said to the graduates.

Thieman shared an acronym, CARE 4 ME, describing what the graduates should do to take care of themselves. It stands for:

Connect with the God you believe in everyday;

Ask what you need to put your life in better balance;

Rest and sleep;

Eat right;

4 times a day practice slow, deep, easy, relaxing breathing;

Mind your mind -- physically, mentally and spiritually;

Exercise.

"When you care for your mind, body and spirit it's going to make you an even better nurse," Thieman said.

She also shared her motto: "Today I will also CARE 4 ME, and truly live my priority.

Guest speaker LeAnn Thieman, co-author of "Chicken Soup for the Nurse's Soul," reminds the graduates to take care of themselves, so they can better take care of others. (Callie Jones/Journal-Advocate)

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"Sometimes it's hard to really live what you thought was your number one priority for those few years that you're in school, but now you have that clean slate, you can pay attention to how you spend your time," Thieman told the students.

She encouraged the graduates to remember the saying, "It's better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness."

"That's what you're going to be doing every day," Thieman told the graduates. "You'll light your single candles and when you do that you are inspiring everybody else around you -- in your clinic and hospital setting, in your community and in your home life -- to light their single candles. You will set not just your area, you will help set the whole world aglow with your goodness and your caring.

"As we glance over this past year, we have grown and learned so much from each other, from our instructors and from our patients," she said. "Nursing school has taught us more than how to manage patient care, it has given us advice, provided us with memories and quotes to live by in our career and in our personal life."

Those quotes include: "You can't do better until you know better;" "Math saves lives;" "I wouldn't say it, if I didn't mean it;" "The squeaky wheel gets the oil;" and "Now that we are graduating, we have an important job to do, because we are the last one between everything and our patient.

"Even though I just told you all that nurses are the center of the universe, I would like to remind you that it's a tough job and we couldn't do it without you," Dunton told her fellow graduates.

Several awards were also handed out at the ceremony.

The Highest Academic Average Award, sponsored by the Sterling Rotary Club, went to Sandra Capraro, and the Best Bedside Nurse Award, sponsored by the Sterling Quota Club, was presented to Momona Girmay.

RE-1 Valley School District has announced its policy for determining eligibility of children who may receive free and reduced price meals served under the National School Lunch and School Breakfast Program.
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